Yeah, this prediction would require something that's not happened yet: for real people to actually begin purchasing Windows phones. I've seen only one of them in the wild, and I live and work not too far from the Microsoft homeworld. This phone was owned by the husband of a MSFT employee who only owned it because Microsoft no longer subsidizes the mobile accounts of employees who use iPhones (apparently Blackberry's are still okay though).

He hated the thing and missed his iPhone.

See? Microsoft has to effectively bribe even its employees to use their phones. I find it hard to believe they will successfully overtake the iPhone...

I am not sure I'd say "that's impossible" but I would certainly suggest it's improbable.

The multi-vendor approach *could* do well. But it didn't, with WinMob, which was trounced by RIM and then put to death by the iPhone.

WP7 is, in my mind, a nice product. Unfortunately it is a nice 2007 product, released just prior to 2011. Current information is that they won't get baseline features until the end of 2011 (features promised for spring 2011). Many app developers are seriously unhappy, with terrible sales and not much support from Microsoft (go read the boards, they're very enlightening).

Microsoft can spend their way into a bunch of vendors, as they did with Nokia, but capturing broad market mindshare takes more than that. Compare WP7 to iOS and Android: It's not cheaper, the hardware is basically just the same Android hardware, it's way down on applications, and handset OS upgrades are proving to be a lot more difficult than anyone expected. What, really, indicates that its sales are about to take off?

I don't think anything does. I think any chance WP7 had of being a success was killed by being 3 years later than Android, which also has vendor breadth plus a good software stack and lots of applications and a lot more vendor customizability (which you can read as "competitive differentiation").

Well... if they are discussing market share in terms of what Android has done, then it's theoretically possible providing ...

Yes, but lots of things are "theoretically possible" (including Blackberry taking 99% of the market for example), but the point of a "prediction" by analyst is that it's supposed to be the most likely outcome given the facts.

This is not that. It's really just guesswork based on some really questionable assumptions.

The most egregious part is the Windows Phone 7 prediction because there simply haven't been enough handsets sold to be even able to tell if consumers *like* the thing, yet here they are practically predicting world-wide dominance.

If Microsoft had just come out with a phone that was really popular, (not true) but were having a hard time getting hardware partners (true) and *then* they merged Nokia, then this prediction might be justified. If Nokia's software development was crap (true) and the company was failing as a result (true), and had then been taken over by a software company that had a really hot OS (not true), that everyone was clamouring for (not true), then the prediction would also be valid.

The key point is that the prediction is only good if one assumes that Microsoft's new OS is the hottest thing since sliced bread, and that people will be switching to it in droves once it's out in the market. None of that is necessarily true.

Weird mix of being pretty conservative on the iPhone projection and wildly optimistic about WP7. Nokia and Microsoft could just as easily walk off a cliff together and never be heard from again.

The way I'd do this would be to start with each company's sales in the last year, come up with some reasonable growth rates, and then see where share ends up as a result of those growth rates playing out. My guess is that both Nokia and RIM will see pretty meager growth rates which will hurt them both on share quite a bit. Here's a rough stab at it:

In 2010, there were about 300 million smartphones across these platforms distributed thusly:

I feel like the Apple projection is the easiest to make, but the others have a lot of variance. I'm assuming here that Google and MS do about equally mediocre in developing their platforms, but there are good reasons to think that either one could really screw up or really do well.

So 0 + 0 = 20% marketshare by 2015? Did IDC flunk math?
As far as I'm concerned nobody lines up to buy Nokia, and nobody lines up to buy Windows Phone 7. How does both together beat iPhone?

I see what you're saying. But then people don't line up to buy PCs and PCs crush Mac sales. The lines are an anomaly to Apple and sometimes a game system. But lines are like the sprint, not the marathon.

Actually the numbers may not be off the mark. Remember they are looking at this in terms of operating systems and Windows and Android are open for anyone to license while iOs is not.

So basically they are talking about an OS tied to a single device holding steady to perhaps dropping less than a percent while the other systems have to hit multiple hardware attempts to duke it out for the rest of the market.

In terms of hardware, the iPhone could still rise up as the best selling hardware. Perhaps by a sizable margin

And remember that not having a huge chunk of the market can be a good place re: antitrust and other legal issues. Apple may be very happy with a mere 15% if it means no one can sue and make the open the OS for licensing. Especially if that cut is bringing on money hand over fist with 100 of millions of iPhones being sold and billions of apps being bought.

Sorry, IDC has been consistently way off with their predictions. This time no different.

I see what you're saying. But then people don't line up to buy PCs and PCs crush Mac sales. The lines are an anomaly to Apple and sometimes a game system. But lines are like the sprint, not the marathon.

Weird mix of being pretty conservative on the iPhone projection and wildly optimistic about WP7. Nokia and Microsoft could just as easily walk off a cliff together and never be heard from again.

The way I'd do this would be to start with each company's sales in the last year, come up with some reasonable growth rates, and then see where share ends up as a result of those growth rates playing out. My guess is that both Nokia and RIM will see pretty meager growth rates which will hurt them both on share quite a bit. Here's a rough stab at it:

In 2010, there were about 300 million smartphones across these platforms distributed thusly:

I feel like the Apple projection is the easiest to make, but the others have a lot of variance. I'm assuming here that Google and MS do about equally mediocre in developing their platforms, but there are good reasons to think that either one could really screw up or really do well.

I think you are way closer than the "analyst" but I would disagree a bit.

RIM is in the motions of "walking off a cliff" right now. I would argue they will be dead meat by 2015 and basically just running the BBM service on other peoples devices, so those 90 million users would have to be re-allocated. I would think there is a reasonably good chance that MS and Nokia's partnership is doomed also, but it's by no means as certain as RIM's demise.

When RIM goes belly-up the users will probably split 80/20 - iOS/Android because most corporate users are not going to go for Android. So that will be a big pickup for Apple in the interim IMO.

Windows Phone *is* kind of the wild card there also however, in that if the OS is useable and popular, they could pick up all kinds of corporate support. I just don't see it at the moment though as Windows Phone 7 is just crap right now from all reports.

I am not sure I'd say "that's impossible" but I would certainly suggest it's improbable.

The multi-vendor approach *could* do well. But it didn't, with WinMob, which was trounced by RIM and then put to death by the iPhone.

WP7 is, in my mind, a nice product. Unfortunately it is a nice 2007 product, released just prior to 2011. Current information is that they won't get baseline features until the end of 2011 (features promised for spring 2011). Many app developers are seriously unhappy, with terrible sales and not much support from Microsoft (go read the boards, they're very enlightening).

Microsoft can spend their way into a bunch of vendors, as they did with Nokia, but capturing broad market mindshare takes more than that. Compare WP7 to iOS and Android: It's not cheaper, the hardware is basically just the same Android hardware, it's way down on applications, and handset OS upgrades are proving to be a lot more difficult than anyone expected. What, really, indicates that its sales are about to take off?

I don't think anything does. I think any chance WP7 had of being a success was killed by being 3 years later than Android, which also has vendor breadth plus a good software stack and lots of applications and a lot more vendor customizability (which you can read as "competitive differentiation").

Personally, I think that 2007 stuff is nonsense. Windows Phone 7 is a modern OS. It's interface is superior to iOS in many ways. People seem to be freaking out about the lack of cut-and-paste and multitasking. Two things I'd personally like to disable on my iOS devices. I'm constantly selecting content without meaning to. I go to swipe the page down and end up with a huge swatch of blue selected data. Annoying. And it irks me to no end that when I close an app it doesn't actually close the app. That I have to manually visit the task manager just to close a freaking app. Very poor design. Every app should be rewritten to have a big "close" button that can be used to actually close the application. And why does Apple waste so much of the screen with their task manager? Why just a ribbon of icons at the bottom 10% of the screen? HP's webOS at least as a nice looking task manager (card interface). It looks like Windows Phone is going to steal it. Both beat the hell out of Apple's implementation.

I guess I'm still stunned by people that live by extremes. Something is either great or crap. There's no in between.

This prediction isnt as crazy as people think, though I doubt Symbian will be that low. The IDC basically exchanged Symbian for WP7 on Nokia devices while still siphoning off a good deal of the Nokias sales to other vendors OSes.

I think its far too early to tell what 2015 will be like, but this isnt even close to being improbable. WP7 is a good modern mobile OS. Its still missing some key features, but these are features that iPhone OS and Android didnt have when they first emerged and slated features that Android still doesnt have ready. Because of this I dont think we will be able to tell what WP7 can do for Nokia or the competition until we get some more evidence, which should be available this year.

I disagree with you, especially in that time frame. Unless Apple really drops the ball they are not just change the game that fast. It doesn't even account for what is happening in the year before they even come out with the new Nokia/Windows phone. Next summer Apple will probably have their 4G phone out.

I think you are way closer than the "analyst" but I would disagree a bit.

RIM is in the motions of "walking off a cliff" right now. I would argue they will be dead meat by 2015 and basically just running the BBM service on other peoples devices, so those 90 million users would have to be re-allocated. I would think there is a reasonably good chance that MS and Nokia's partnership is doomed also, but it's by no means as certain as RIM's demise.

When RIM goes belly-up the users will probably split 80/20 - iOS/Android because most corporate users are not going to go for Android. So that will be a big pickup for Apple in the interim IMO.

Windows Phone *is* kind of the wild card there also however, in that if the OS is useable and popular, they could pick up all kinds of corporate support. I just don't see it at the moment though as Windows Phone 7 is just crap right now from all reports.

I think you are way closer than the "analyst" but I would disagree a bit.

RIM is in the motions of "walking off a cliff" right now. I would argue they will be dead meat by 2015 and basically just running the BBM service on other peoples devices, so those 90 million users would have to be re-allocated. I would think there is a reasonably good chance that MS and Nokia's partnership is doomed also, but it's by no means as certain as RIM's demise.

When RIM goes belly-up the users will probably split 80/20 - iOS/Android because most corporate users are not going to go for Android. So that will be a big pickup for Apple in the interim IMO.

Windows Phone *is* kind of the wild card there also however, in that if the OS is useable and popular, they could pick up all kinds of corporate support. I just don't see it at the moment though as Windows Phone 7 is just crap right now from all reports.

Good point on RIM -- you're probably right that I was too generous with them. My guess is that they'd go 50-30-20 Apple-MS-Android (unless MS tanks, in which case I'd agree with you)

I actually think MS has done some nifty things with the UI for Windows Phone, but this prediction is wildly optimistic for Windows/Nokia.

First, remember that we're already well into 2011, and most people with smart phones (at least in the US) have 2 year contracts. That means most people holding iPhone 4s now won't even be back in the market until 2012 or 2013. The same goes for the early adopters of 4G phones for Android. That means Windows/Nokia will have to win over a HUGE percentage current iOS and Android phone owners as they come out of their contracts in a very short period of time to get to this level of marketshare by 2015. (And, in addition to iOS and Android, new WebOS phones will soon enter the fray featuring the old Palm's nifty OS and now backed by the very deep pockets of HP.)

I'm guessing the analyst is just assuming Nokia will maintain their current market share into 2015 and, because almost all phones will be smart phones by then, by extension, Windows Phone will eclipse iOS. This is a huge leap, though, since Nokia has lost vast marketshare in North America, Europe, and Asia. Yes, it still sells tons of phones worldwide, but now they're mostly low end models sold into the third world. It's not at all clear to me why the analyst expects Windows to make giant inroads against Apple and Android in the first world, or why third world users would opt into Windows over Android as smartphone hardware commoditizes over the next few years unless Microsoft plans to PAY end users to use its OS just as it's paying Nokia to use it now.

Personally, I think that 2007 stuff is nonsense. Windows Phone 7 is a modern OS. It's interface is superior to iOS in many ways. People seem to be freaking out about the lack of cut-and-paste and multitasking. Two things I'd personally like to disable on my iOS devices. I'm constantly selecting content without meaning to. I go to swipe the page down and end up with a huge swatch of blue selected data. Annoying. And it irks me to no end that when I close an app it doesn't actually close the app. That I have to manually visit the task manager just to close a freaking app. Very poor design. Every app should be rewritten to have a big "close" button that can be used to actually close the application. And why does Apple waste so much of the screen with their task manager? Why just a ribbon of icons at the bottom 10% of the screen? HP's webOS at least as a nice looking task manager (card interface). It looks like Windows Phone is going to steal it. Both beat the hell out of Apple's implementation.

I guess I'm still stunned by people that live by extremes. Something is either great or crap. There's no in between.

Given the vehemence of your comments you seem to fall in the iOS is crap extreme. LOL.

Not sure what your cut and paste problem is. I would hope that after making the same mistake 100 times you'd figure out how to touch the screen to do what you want.

The "anal yst" behind this report is working on two "ass umptions"
1. Apple's strategy will remain unchanged
2. Nokia will effectively migrate 100% of its current user base to it's future platform

One additional assumption.... Right now MS is paying Nokia to use their phone OS. How long is MS going to be willing to put up billions of dollars for manufacturers to use their OS (looking at Plays For Sure, Zune, etc, as examples of MS's level of commitment to projects)?

And once MS starts charging to license their OS, will manufacturers just switch to the free Android instead? If the Nokia+MS phone hits a few out of the park, other handset makers might be willing to pay for the OS, but until then they will just keep using Android.

And it irks me to no end that when I close an app it doesn't actually close the app.

I guess I'm still stunned by people that live by extremes. Something is either great or crap. There's no in between.

You leave the app be going to another. The app left only exists in the last-used apps list, and is not in any way still running. There is no need to close it yourself. The only exceptions are apps such as iPod or navigational apps which you want to continue whilst you fiddle.

Seriously, what a joke. As if they could make any reasonable prediction about a fast moving tech category like smartphones FOUR years out. One year is pushing it. Four years is flat out stupid.

For instance, they make no mention of HP's WebOS operating system or Motorola's new OS that is in the works. Does that mean that they are predicting that both operating systems will not go anywhere in the next four years? Seriously, anyone who takes this seriously as an investment strategy deserves to lose all of their money. They might as well go to Madame Zelda down the street and have her read the bones for investment advice.

So, unless someone can show me a 2007 prediction from these charlatans predicting the current market shares of the iPhone and Android, I can only laugh and shake my head at the idiotic lengths these analyst will go to for 15 seconds of fame.

Interestingly, this analysis assumes that both Nokia and RIM will stay at roughly the same levels in 2015 as in 2011. What is the likelihood of that? What is the likelihood that even one of them will neither grow nor shrink by a noteworthy % share of the market.

It does not take a genius (but perhaps more than an analyst) to predict that one of Nokia or RIM will be headed toward irrelevance in 4 years.